WION Spotlight | Trump says Spain's neo-fascists doing a 'great job'

There is a lot of the good, the bad and the ugly that is common to the 1920s and 2020s.

The “Roaring 1920s”, as the Americans used to call it, was a decade of change brought on by cars, radios and telephones. The radio brought the world into people’s homes. The telephone, like the automobile, connected people. A world rooted in and driven by communication and mobility triggered unforeseen development in America and Europe. It was a decade of economic growth and expanding prosperity marked by a cultural and social dynamism that saw both fashion and music make tremendous advances. Radio, telephone, films, automobiles, aviation, electricity and electrical goods spurred industrial growth and transformed millions of lives in the West.

The ‘flu epidemic that broke out in 1918 and is estimated to have killed between 20 and 50 million raged on till 1920 and was followed by disastrous after-effects. That was also the decade of migration and globalisation (good); violent nativism (bad); and, rampant racism, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and genocide (ugly).

The political and economic processes of the 1920s paved the way for the unimaginable horrors of the 1930s. The financial crisis that gripped the US and the economic distress in Europe paved the way for the rise of fascist forces which seized power and unleashed widespread hatred and violence against Jews and other minorities that made World War II inevitable.

Cut to the 2020s. Even those who remember this history are condemned to repeat it. The awesome technological revolution has spawned supercomputers, the internet, the cellular phone and the hydra-headed monster that is the media and social media. These in turn, both as medium and message, have brought about an explosion of information and knowledge extending to the remotest and poorest parts of the world connected in every way by multiple infrastructures.

The good that comes with technology, computers and cars do cannot be separated from the bad, the ugly and the evil that exist alongside.

Thus, 100 years later, despite all the advancements in medicine the world could not prevent the pandemic of Covid-19, which spared no country and killed millions. There is already a gathering economic crisis where large sections of the population in Africa, South America and the poor quarters of Asia are facing the threat of starvation. Hunger also looms large in regions which have been cut off from food supplies, first by the epidemic and now by the war in Ukraine.

There is migration, racism, intolerance, killings, persecution of minorities and, like in the 1920s, a resurgence of fascist forces in the developing and the developed parts of the world.

The latest reminder that the world today may be in for the ugly consequences that flowed from the events and developments of the 1920s, is former US President Donald Trump extending open support to the fascist far-right in Spain. Trump did this in a video recording that was shown at a rally of the far-right Vox party in Madrid. Trumped thanked Vox and its leader Santiago Abascal for the “great job” they were doing.

Vox, the third largest party in the Spanish parliament, is: opposed to immigrants, shuns gender equality, hostile to Islam and openly embraces the legacy of the fascist dictator Gen Francisco Franco. The rally was endorsed by the likes of Giorgia Meloni, leader of the neo-fascist Brothers of Italy that swept to power in the recent elections; and, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who has emerged as an icon for the new generation of European fascists.

The big difference between the 1920s and the 2020s is that, in the last century, US presidents did not support the fascists or cheer them on. Instead, the US entered the War to fight fascism. In the 2020s, a former US president, who may well return to the White House in 2024, along with Senator Ted Cruz, has firmly cast their lot with the forces of fascism, intolerance and hate at home and abroad.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)

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